E Vedrai Scrito in Core: 'Tu eil mio Amore'
by Servant of SHEVAL
Summary: With a heavy mind, and a hanging head, he put his poisoned heart in his hand and offered it for the taking by anyone a fool enough to come too close. Tifentine, Yuffentine, character death, slight DOC spoilers, slight AU.
1. Prologue

**Author's Beginning Note Thingy:** If anybody's ever read the manga series Demon Diary, then they are probably familiar with the short story at the end called 'The Crystal Heart'. Yeah, this is a blatant ripoff. But stick around and see what happens, I'm trying new pairings here. Let's just hope this fic will be short (I'm aiming at three chapters) because I have two other longer ones to get back to.

And damn me for STILL focusing all my fics around Vincent. I'll get different inspiration someday.

Oh, lastly... forgive the probably-really-bad Italian grammer in the title... it's song lyrics, so I don't know if its correct the way it is or not. Probably not, because I had to improvise a little.

xxx

Vincent lay a hand on his chest, over his heart. Something throbbed down there, and it wasn't that quickly beating organ. Throbbed through his entire body, left a captured growling in a throat that he didn't own, and an urgent scratching at the walls of a trapped mind.

He hated what he was about to do... absolutely despised this necessity which had overtaken him, but he couldn't deny it. Chaos _must_ be kept in, at any costs... even this terrible one.

The placid, pacifying effect that Lucrecia had on him was wearing off... her spirit was growing weary, and it deserved to rest. So he let it go. Let her evanesce away, but from then on he knew, he _knew_ he was living on borrowed time...

Love had quelled the power of the beast within him, but now she had no more love to give. So the energy of the protomateria was fading, and Chaos was growing restless. He hovered on the border of sleep and wakefulness, growled and tossed and turned. Soon he would want to be set free.

Only now did he see how his original solution could not be permanent, to cling to a dying love. No, already dead. The source, the power would have to be constant to have any hope of keeping the demon in check. But Vincent couldn't rely on that either... what if, even providing that he did find a stronger energy, it too faded away? No, love was too dangerous now... he could not risk hurting another as he had hurt her, drawing on _their_ very essence for the preservation of _his_ soul.

Vincent hung his head, poised at the wall outside Edge city. How much he wanted, though, for that mutual feeling again. How long he'd searched for it, longed for it, and come out empty handed again and again. Maybe he just wasn't capable of giving love... which was why he'd needed to borrow it, borrow Lucrecia's. And now he needed another's.

Seduction. That wouldn't be hard to do. Rigorous Turk-training had made him a master at body-language, empathy, acting... all the tools he needed for this sinful task. With a little spare gil and a sweet smile (if he could manage one), any unsuspecting city girl would be wrapped around his fingers to fulfill the purpose he'd sought her out for.

Awful, he knew. Disgusting that he'd been reduced to this almost parasitic existence. He apologized to Lucrecia constantly for his coming infidelity, for this mockery of love that he was about to take part in. And with a heavy mind, and a hanging head, he put his poisoned heart in his hand and offered it for the taking by anyone a fool enough to come too close.

xxx

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Confused yet? I'm trying to make this clear, but it's a weird concept I've come up with, and I'm not sure how to get it across. Questions in review-form are welcomed!


	2. Heartlocked

Tifa sighed and stared out the dark rainy window behind the bar. Time had passed in the worst way possible. Marlene and Denzel were practically all grown up, in their mid-teens, and she was a lonely thirty-year-old bar owner in the West corner of Edge, scraping off a living from the tips left behind by the fat patrons. She'd seen from across the counter how their faces aged year-by-year, the loyal ones, at least, that kept coming. Inwardly, she wondered if she had changed that much too... if they had noticed fine wrinkles work their way slowly across formerly perfect skin.

Insomnia had plagued her for the past few nights. Morbid thoughts of the future and of the past. There had been a wave of serial killings that had suddenly struck the town. She heard about it mostly in exaggerated rumor-form from the drunken mouths of customers, but tried to gather as much of truth as she could from that, and the meager amount of news she watched or read.

The victims were all women, and followed a pattern: inner-city girls that no-one knew or cared to remember, hearts torn brutally right out of their chests and collected. That word, _collected_ struck Tifa to the core. _Collected_ and never found. What kind of monster could have done this...? She dearly hoped Denzel was keeping Marlene safe. Despite her martial arts prowess, the female fighter was quite glad that where she lived was the same as where she worked. Travel time between home and job involved just walking down the stairs.

Still, though, she couldn't help but feel trapped by that.

A bell jingled, and Tifa was woken with a start and a flinch from her daydreaming. In an instant she was on her feet by the window. Despite pajamas, she took a fighting stance facing the dark mid-night visitor. The door had been locked! Who was it, and how had they gotten in?

"Hey, Tifs. Sorry, I had to pick the lock..." said a familiar feminine voice, and the lights flicked on. Yuffie was standing with her hand on the switch, staring blankly at the other woman.

"Yuffie?" Tifa called disbelievingly, squinting in the harsh and sudden light.

"Yeah, the one and only." she said, her voice lackluster and unenthusiastic as she walked over to the bar and took a seat on a stool, slamming a belt-strapped briefcase on the counter in front of her.

Her childlike demeanor, and sweet grey eyes had grown solemn and steely in recent years. The former Wutaian ninja had settled down in Midgar with a husband, none other than Reno, after the Second Advent. She'd even put her unique skills to work and joined the Turks, much to Elena's elation. Only the second female ever to be part of the team. The two were fast friends, but...

Being a Turk was a dangerous job. People often died in the line of work... and Reno had been the first to go. Tifa never heard the details. ShinRa was reluctant to release them, and Yuffie never wanted to talk about it. The fighter didn't want to put her friend through the pressure necessary to find out, so she just let the issue hang. Elena went next, though, and recently. A victim of those recent unsolved murders. Yuffie used to stop in often once she lived so close by… but the visits had dwindled off since Reno's death, come sporadically and unannounced, but never this late. Tifa hadn't seen her once since Elena passed.

"What are you doing here, Yuffie?" she asked tiredly, walking over to her familiar place behind the counter, leaning up against it to converse with her friend. She idly pulled the white collar of her nightshirt back up from where it had slipped down her shoulders. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Three in the morning." Yuffie replied without hesitation, then paused. "Wait..." she pulled the sleeve of her navy suit up, exposing her thin arm, and checked the watch. "...three-twelve."

Tifa sighed. Yuffie was the job... it had been consuming the poor girl's life for so long, and she was determined to live it now, and only it. She could see the former ninja's determination in her dull eyes. There was no use talking her out of it.

"Can I make you something?" she asked, beginning to shuffle through the bottles behind her counter.

"I'm on the job." the girl dryly replied, unbelting the suitcase and pulling it open, removing some papers from inside.

"You're always on the job." Tifa grumbled, preparing her cocktail nonetheless. "Come on, it'll calm you down. Plus, it's an old favorite." she gave a gentle smile. The glass was set down with a clunk in front of the girl, but she didn't seem to notice.

Tifa just stood there and stared, waiting for Yuffie to respond. The former ninja just kept scribbling down something on a form until she reached the bottom of the page, and only then glanced forward. "A Shirley Temple, Tifs?" she asked incredulously, a clumsy smirk pulling up a corner of her lips, "You shouldn't have."

"Yeah, well..." Tifa began courteously, but was cut off...

"...an over-sweet mixture of sense-dulling, mind-numbing, slightly toxic alcohol, artificially flavored chemicals, and red food coloring. No thanks, Tifs, you _really_ shouldn't have." she pushed the drink away and returned to her papers.

Tifa sighed in exasperation, and lightly rubbed her sleep-deprived eyes. She could already feel thin folds of flesh and swollen bags forming beneath them. "Well fine, then. Suit yourself. If you ever do decide to turn in, there's a free bed upstairs in Cloud's old room for you. And if you get hungry, you know where to find the fridge." Yuffie responded with nothing but a silent, subtle nod, and so the fighter just turned around and stumbled toward the stairwell. It really was useless... it was near impossible to cheer the former ninja up. Hell must have frozen over, because Yuffie had become just like _Vincent_.

And speaking of hell and the devil, the door opened again with that familiar jingling...

Fighter instincts never lost their edge, both Tifa and Yuffie were on their feet in an instant, fists raised, or hand slipping into the pocket of the blue suit, no doubt closing around a throwing star of some kind.

"Vincent!" Tifa gasped, and bypassed the clueless-looking Yuffie in a rush to the door.

The man wobbled in, claw-hand supporting him against the doorframe while the rain and wind whipped about his cloak outside. The red garment was even further tattered than either woman had last remembered it, his face was thin and grave, ash-pale. He looked sickly. Matted dark hair stuck to his skin, and there was a strange quality to his red eyes. In short, he looked like hell.

"Vincent, are you allright?" the nightshirt-clad woman asked worriedly. All of a sudden, she wished she'd worn more clothing to bed... the loose button-up shirt only covered down to her mid-thighs, her feet were bare, and the air rushing in the door was deathly cold. She grabbed ahold of the man's human arm and tried to pull him in.

This was when he looked up at her... eyes dancing over her face and body as if he were seeing her for the first time. His pale lips parted for just a moment, and a tonal breath flickered out, as if he was trying to say something, but just didn't have quite the strength to.

Without a word more, his grip on the splintering doorframe gave, and the claw was wrenched out as Vincent came crashing, unconscious to the ground.

"Oh, Cetra..." Tifa swore, "Yuffie, gimme a hand!" she said, voice stern and commanding. There was no time for games now. She supposed she'd be met with opposition to her order, but contrarily the girl stood up, used to receiving instruction in such a way, and ran over.

While she dragged the gunman carefully inside, the former ninja snapped shut the door, and locked it again so as to no longer be disturbed.

It was a bit of an ordeal getting him over to and on the couch, stripping off his dripping cloak as well. Beneath that, all the leather he wore was actually relatively dry, protected by the outer layer of red fabric, and its own waterproof qualities. Tifa sat, now with a pair of sweatpants, on the arm of the sofa, gently combing out the knots in the sleeping man's raven hair.

"What do you think happened?" she asked her companion, who was staring down from the place where she stood nearby.

"I don't know." Yuffie's voice was emotionless as she walked forward, thick boots heavily clunking on the wood floor. She stretched a hand out to him as she came within reach, fingers uncurling from their fist to stroke the side of his face, "But it can't be that bad. After all..." she said, looking at Tifa bitterly, "...he still has his heart."

xxx

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Morbid. XD Fweehehe. Moreso than I usually get in my FF7 fics. I have a very clear mind for where this is going to go. Three chapters is out of the question already. New goal is to get it in five. I know generally what the next chapter is going to encompass, and the one after that... that'll bring me to four, and I need an epilogue. As of having finished writing this, I still have no story title, though I have named all the chapters already. Yay.


	3. Lovelorn

It was late morning by the time Tifa was up again. She'd gone to bed about an hour before sunrise after seeing to Vincent, and refusing to let Yuffie out again. The girl could protect herself, but already one Turk had fallen as a victim to that feared murderer, and the woman was not about to see one of her best friends go missing too.

There was an ironically placid smile on her face, which knew it shouldn't be there, as she came down the stairs in the daylight. The bleached-out sun through the brooding clouds sent a nevertheless warm yellow glow through the curtains, spilling across the floor in the livingroom, where Vincent slept.

She held a steaming cup of lemon tea in her hand, and sipped it periodically as she padded around the room. The situation was grave... poor Yuffie was a broken spirit, driven to the edge of obsession by it. She'd withered from the buoyant sixteen-year-old girl Tifa once knew. Vincent had experienced Hades-only-knows-what on his way here, but the fighter had a great deal of trouble imagining it: whatever could have scared the man so senseless, worn him out so much.

She sat down easily in a comfy armchair by the couch where Vincent still slept peacefully. His face was strangely... humanized in the gentle mid-morning light. Not the cold marble statue it had been on their earlier adventure, shrouded by the bloodred collar, stoic and expressionless. His chest rose and fell with steady breathing, and, not that Tifa often watched him sleep, his rest was undisturbed by the erratic movements or REM specific to nightmares.

A sigh of contentment passed her lips before she took another drink of the warm liquid in her cup. Only gentle sounds came, her breath, the soft gulp of swallowing, and the clink as she set her glass down on the coffeetable. Nevertheless, this was plenty enough to wake the ever-alert gunman up.

His eyes came open with a snap, and he immediately sat up straight, even breaths stolen away as he looked around wildly, gasping like he'd been drowned.

"Vincent…?" Tifa called to him, shifting her weight, rising up to the front of the chair, "Vincent, calm down, you're safe."

"Tifa!" he blurted at the sight of her, "What hap-... where is... where am I...?" all between sudden pants, desperately sucking in air that she was sure he didn't need.

"I said calm down, _please_..." her fingertips massaged her temples lightly. It was too early still to be given a headache by any one of her companions, let alone this usually sensible, quiet one. She hadn't seen him in years... and he hadn't changed one bit. The woman found herself somewhat envious, those perfect dark waves cascading down from his head, that flawless skin...

"Tifa..." the rippling flare in his eyes that she'd recognized from last night was dying down, and simultaneously he seemed to be getting back a grip on his breath, and his senses. "I..." his voice cracked, lowering from the panicked high that it took to the normal deep register, "I'm sorry." he finished, "I came here in a frenzy, because I..." words caught, stuck, and didn't come out, so he rephrased, "...didn't know... where else to go. Haven't seen you in quite a while."

She'd been about to ask him what happened, what could have _possibly_ happened to send _him_ into such an uproarious rush, when she just stopped and smiled. Glad to see she was missed... "That's fine, Vincent, you know you're always welcome here..." she reached out for her drink, missing the warmth between her hands.

"I know." he said, placing his claw-hand carefully over his face and closing his eyes. "I stayed away because I..."

"Hey, Vincent." came another voice, one Tifa _almost_ didn't recognize for a moment, before she realized it was Yuffie. And the sight that met her eyes absolutely stunned her into further silence for a moment. There was Yuffie, marching daintily down the hallway toward them, wearing some of Marlene's chocobo-print pajamas, which she used if she stayed over the night sometimes, and _smiling_. The first time she had smiled in at least a year.

"...had to." the gunman finished off, mumbling, and looking down, his hand returning to his lap.

She stopped behind his back, poking him in the shoulder lightly, "What's got you so glum? Oh wait..." and then she _laughed_, just a faint chuckle, really, "...that's normal."

_You're one to talk, sweetie._ Tifa wanted to say, looking up at her. Vincent didn't answer, which was expected, but Yuffie didn't seem particularly affected by it. She yawned, and stretched, blinking her sleepy eyes and smacking her lips. "So what's for breakfast, Tifa?" she asked casually.

Another first-time-in-a-long-time for Yuffie. Tifa couldn't help but be glad that she'd at least temporarily dropped that horrid nickname Reno once gave her, that seemed to stick. "Toast and eggs."

Yuffie nodded. "Yum." they both looked to Vincent, whose delayed reaction was nothing more than a shallow nod of approval. His eyes were distant, staring down at his legs, through his legs. They knew that look... he was occupied with something, something secret deep within his own head, and it was unwise to deter him from it.

So, without protest, they went on their ways, Yuffie flopping down in Tifa's vacated chair and flipping on the TV, while the older woman took herself and her teacup to the kitchen to start preparing some food for them. It was just those two, besides herself... but it already seemed just like old times. The house was much more full than it had been when it was just her. She felt like it fit like a _home_ much better. Recently, the walls had gotten loose around her, made themselves into a drafty, distant frame that she was strained to try and fill.

But she was happy doing what she was doing now, flipping omelettes expertly in a pan with one hand, downing the last of the teacup with the other. She had a purpose now beyond the meaningless daily toil of bar work, and took only a slight detour on her way to serve breakfast in the livingroom to go to the front door of the Seventh Heaven, and flip the 'Open' sign to 'Closed'.

She didn't know how it happened, if there had been any convincing involved, or just a strange fluke, but somehow, for some reason... Yuffie and Vincent had stuck around, and she was _not_ complaining.

Only three days later, she could see it was better for all of them. She had mused in bed, late one night, still stricken by sleeplessness, on how they all seemed to be reacting to the unusual amount of company.

Yet it had been three _weeks_. Three long, eventful weeks, and Tifa no longer denied that something had drawn them all together there on that one night by some kind of strange magnetism. Perhaps a destiny to fulfill, perhaps Fate (or Aeris) was tired of seeing them stumble around one another in the dark. For some reason or another, they all put aside what else they surely had to do: Tifa's bar work, Yuffie's Turk mission, Vincent's… whatever, and just stay.

Solitude was good for no-one... and it had long worked away on the sanity of Vincent. Truth be told, she could quite easily see some places where he'd been chipped away at as a person, lost some part of himself that had turned to dust and blown away, and would never return. Yet his work of art was still salvageable, and that was what they were doing.

Yuffie, too. It seemed to be good for her to have someone to tease. The fighter knew that she and Reno had gone at it endlessly, and never met with any anger, got nothing but laughs and kisses. Yuffie respected Tifa and Cloud too much to poke fun at them (not that Cloud was ever around to do that to), and in both Vincent and Reno's (And Cid's and Red's) absence, she had no-one. Her levity was returning, little by little, and tentatively, but it was there.

They were good for _one another_, Tifa finally realized, rolling over onto her side and staring out the window at the winter moon. Vincent was coming (albeit reluctantly) out of his shell, and Yuffie emerging from hers, like butterflies. Their wings were still wet with tears from the past, but soon enough, in the light of the sun, they would spread their colors and fly off together to some unknown horizon.

A frown creased her lips now. Fly off... together... leave her alone. She... didn't want that. Didn't want what? For her friends to be happy? No, that was horrible! Every one of them had spent so long living in sorrow, and now these two had finally found their escape? How could she hold them back? No, she wouldn't. If Vincent and Yuffie found something in one another that they needed to have, she wouldn't be a block to it.

Night closed in. A tear leaked from her auburn eye, and she wiped the water away, and as it closed in sleep, she only just began to wonder... when exactly was it that she'd fallen in love with Vincent Valentine?

xxx

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Yeah, I know the romance is moving quick... but yet again, I think this is gonna take more chapters than I thought to get done. I'll see if I can explain it in the next chapter a little more (thus the need for more chapters than I thought it'd take), but we'll see. I've been writing up a storm (GASP! Inspiration actually coincides with skill!) lately, and I'm kind of just going wherever the words take me... with, of course, a clear destination in mind. And that's pretty unusual! I told myself that I'd wait to post this chapter until after I wrote another chapter of one of my other fics, 'Where Others Fail, Prevail' (hint-hint, shameless advertising), but it just wasn't coming to me, and I didn't want to keep you waiting. So here it is: early. Hope you like, please review!


	4. Hellbent

This was why he hadn't come back. This was why he'd stayed away so long without contact or explanation. This was why Vincent had abandoned himself from all of Avalanche. It was too dangerous, risking getting attached.

He'd been spoiled previously, allowed himself to get used to the sociable lifestyle: sharing meals, sharing rooms, conversations with people he called friends. He left all that when he felt Chaos rising. It was too important to him to risk destroying, and so he regressed. For a time, that paid off, the plan worked...

...but nothing ever went as he wanted it to. He'd been forced out of his seclusion for close to a year now, gone flitting back and forth between too many people to count. All had the same end result: waking up in an alley somewhere, blood-covered, the veins and arteries still hanging limply out from under his fingernails, and a report on the news about another body found lying in the street without a heart.

He never did figure out what happened to them... the hearts. He never really wanted to, but he couldn't help the nagging, morbid curiosity. There was nothing more terrifying for him than those moments of madness. He hated admitting it, but there wasn't, just as there wasn't any way to stop them. They were products of sheer desperation, when power was running low. He would just... black out, and wake up slightly revitalized, with just enough juice left to tide him over to the next person he found to feed from. The worst part of it all: He never ever strayed from his goal to quell Chaos' recent rumblings. He did horrible, violent, bloody things as _himself_. Vincent Valentine did horrible, violent, bloody things in the name of preventing some demon from doing the same, so how was that any better?

Every single time dawn came, Chaos was quiet, and Vincent was starkly awake when he least wanted to be. Never had another thirty year sleep seemed so inviting, along with the plausibility of waking to a new world where perhaps he could finally find his peace. But no... there was no rest for the wicked these days.

The worst part yet was the anticipation... hypersensitive, Vincent could always _feel_ the end coming for his latest companion (victim). They would begin to pale slightly, and grow weak... the very minor, outward physical consequences of being unknowingly leeched off of by him. He would see that, and then it wouldn't ever be long... 'batteries' the demon sometimes called them. The mere thought of which made him want to retch, but a more accurate description was nowhere to be found.

_This_ was why he'd stayed away. The brutal killing of innocents was enough of a mark on his soul, and enough of a crack in his frail sanity, but if he became responsible for the death of one of his friends?

Lucrecia had left him irreparably damaged, Avalanche had painstakingly glued his pieces back together again, but he would never be the same. The gentlest wrong touch could make him shatter, and a friend's blood on his hands would be more reminiscent of a rough push.

So he kept out of their affairs, made deliberate moves to avoid them at any costs... so as not to leave them withered shells on accident, so that they would not see what he had become, would not realize this twisted vampirism which had become his regular way of life. He knew that after the warmth he'd once felt, he would not be able to resist the temptation.

And he was right. He hadn't. He'd stumbled into Tifa's that night half out-of-his-mind from visions and depleting willpower. Chaos wanted out again, and sooner than he'd expected. The last poor, seduced girl had hardly divulged any power upon her death, and ended up more a waste of his time than anything else. He hadn't had his senses about him, went to the only place he found familiar, the singular focus of his mind: The Seventh Heaven.

And this morning he did not wake to hard pavement under his back, and a blazing sun staring down through cold reflective buildings, but rather the soft ambience of a comfy livingspace, and Tifa's gentle smile, the citrus scent of her tea wafting under his nostrils instead of car exhaust. And then Yuffie was there, and he'd heard ringing laughter, _true_ ringing laughter without having tried to provoke it... and unconditional kindness in the form of breakfast. He wanted to leave, tried to, but wasn't allowed. The two seemed insistent on letting him stay... and so he humored them, against his better judgment. 'One night.' he told himself, 'Just one night.'

Well, one had turned to twenty-one before he even knew it. He'd settled into a routine: morning, roused by Yuffie and the smell of cooking eggs, a day of lazing around, idle conversation, a light dinner, and then bed. He learned a few things he'd lost track on. Cloud's disappearance was a hot topic in general. He'd just left one day, and arrived in Cosmo Canyon a few months later without even having told Nanaki he was coming. All his possessions were left behind with Tifa, but he never showed any intention of returning for them. Perhaps he'd started a new life for himself over on the other continent, she didn't know. Though she mentioned many times how she meant to one day pay him a visit, and bring along all his old things in case he still wanted them.

Tifa kept things light... almost to the point of getting awkward _because_ she tried so hard to make sure they weren't. It was very in-character for her, Vincent thought, though he wished she wouldn't exhaust herself so. He could already see the wear of the years on her, made even more evident by her tendency to throw her entire being at the things she wanted, thereby making her desires plainly obvious. Right now, for instance, she wanted company. Company that he and Yuffie were both obliged to give, though she didn't seem to notice, just kept on pouring all her energy and all her love into them to make sure they'd stay. It was that tight grip she held that exhausted her, that weakened her, and that so often lost her the things she'd been trying to hold, and Vincent pitied her for it.

Yuffie was another story. Despite the distinct look she had about her, Vincent barely even recognized the girl. For one, it had been the last thing on Gaea he'd expected, for her to join the Turks. Marrying Reno he could see, but the girl taking up a position as a comrade to the man? No... never! But apparently it had happened. She even had the standard-issue ShinRa suit to prove it. She didn't speak about what had happened, and kept her lips sealed tight above her current confidential mission. It was Tifa, again, that had told him late one night while they were up talking, Yuffie having turned in early from several days before gone without sleep, of the deaths of her husband and friend, though she kept the circumstances vague. Vincent didn't press it.

She'd matured beyond measure in all this time... faced things so horrible, and come out the other side... changed, but still living. He wasn't so sure he could call it that, though. Eyes trained for assessment, he knew the way she moved all too well... the assassin's stance, the poise of a Turk. He knew the meaning of each slight look in her stormy eyes. She reminded him far too much of himself.

And despite her discomfort in some situations, she'd been entirely hospitable toward him. Tifa mentioned the change he'd provoked in her, which he wouldn't have even noticed, of course. It made him think... how could he hold that power? How could he change another human being's actions? Had he made Yuffie... happier?

No, that was a happening he certainly couldn't put a claim on. But still... she did seem to enjoy his company, and he hers, much moreso than when she was still just a naive child. In their silent way, they got along well, and understood eachother deeply.

Strangely enough, one of the last oddities he noticed about the situation was the distinct absense of Chaos. No, absense wasn't the right word... pacifism. The demon was still there, he was _always_ there, but he was quiet and asleep, and for so long! But _why_? It took him a while longer to realize the answer to that, which by all rights it shouldn't have. He was so used to the repetitious situation, he should've caught on fast... but the ignorance was no doubt somewhat self-induced. He wanted so much to believe he'd found a true solution in the company of his friends, that he turned a blind eye to the evidence that he hadn't, until it was all too late.

"I love you, Vincent." she had said in the middle of the fourth week, and with a tingling kiss, left him dumbfounded in the gold sunset-filled bedroom he'd been staying in all this time. She was perched at the very foot of the bed, currently looking away, while he lay back on the pillows, a book lying forgotten in his hands.

"I don't know what it is..." she continued in her machinelike voice, where everything was monotone and even, "...but there's something. I think, now I know what it's really like..." she turned a teary-eyed face up to his questioning stare, "...to be you."

Tifa didn't mean to be eavesdropping, had only been passing by with a laundry basket in hand when she chanced to peek into the room and saw the two embrace. It had taken all of her strength and speedy reflexes to keep the whole load from dropping to the floor.

She watched in surprise as the two kindred spirits held one another... Vincent's head resting on the bridge of Yuffie's shoulder, his chin poking over the side onto her back. She was lucky, for the normally alert gunman would have surely noticed her if his eyes had not been closed. Despite the shock of the unlikely situation, her lips turned upward in a very, very soft smile.

They were good for one another, she thought, and had been about to go on, when something stopped her.

It was peculiar, and hard enough to look away from even before the image changed... she swore that there was now a static flickering... it went from the dimly lit, muted color of a natural twilight to a stark greyscale. Bodies warped, changed... Yuffie grew suddenly small, while Vincent appeared very big.

An awkwardly bent, almost skeletal feminine form lay motionless and grey in the girl's place. While a hungry looking white figure bent over where the man had been, holding her in his immaterial hands.

It flashed again, Yuffie and Vincent back where they'd been before, no change. Pain throbbed in her temples, and she struggled to look away, but once again couldn't. Her vision reverted back to the unfamiliar couple.

She saw their hands reach up and entwine, fingers thin, dark and broken, light, clumsy, and incomplete knitted together and held firm. A pure, translucent shine pulsed forth, bursting out of each one's core, the only color at all in the scene. Yuffie's was a dim shade of salmon, and Vincent's a sickly blue like polluted lakewater. Their hands moved again, clasping around the little colored orbs in their chests, and offering them to one another, pressing the light together. She saw them mould, two halves of a heart becoming one.

_No..._ she thought swimmingly, delirious from the surreality of it. They couldn't _actually_ be doing this. It was impossible! What had come over her? What was she seeing? Perhaps she'd fallen asleep hours ago and this was all some strange dream.

In the blatant illumination something was twined around the pale ghost's middle. A thick, gloppy, snakelike darkness so black the only word all-encompassing enough to describe it was 'void': complete absense of anything. It bound him tightly, squeezing, suffocating, crushing out the ethereal beauty, and at last spiraling away, arcing into the thick shadows of the ceiling overhead.

A figure was looming there... dark and demonic, ominous. The camouflaging black up there blurred its outline so that she couldn't make out the shape, but it was that mystery, that leniency given to her imagination which allowed it to take the form of her fears, choosing any one from a long list to portray. The mere sight of it struck such terror into her heart that she froze there in that spot, breath pressed back down where she couldn't get at it.

The image flickered again: surreal ghosts, Vincent and Yuffie, the haunting shapes, mere shells, hollows of what they were before, and then her friends... faster than she could comprehend, to an intensity where the flashing was so bright it burned her eyes and hammered into her brain. She wanted to yell out from the agony of it, but the air was being bottled inside her to the point where she was about to burst.

And then it held, stopped entirely, on pause for a moment... When Tifa dared to look again, the black demon was silently spreading its wings, raising a claw into the air. There was a period of rest, a breath before the plunge. In fact, it all seemed so at peace, that the woman almost had time to convince herself not to be afraid of the dark, that the grotesque shape before her really was just a fluke of the shadows... and then from the fanged, acrid mouth of the beast came an earth-shaking roar, and it lunged at her, red eyes wide in the abyss of its face.

No... if only that. This was certainly real, at least on some plain of existence. She whined pathetically, the only remnants of an attempted scream, the noise bubbling up bit by bit. She could still feel the grip at the top of her lungs, that clutch around her heart.

The spirit's mouth opened, trying to speak to her, or consume her whole. Only a shuddering hiss came out, and at last the broken girl in its arms looked up, the gleam dying in her eyes.

The heart shattered... a million and one tiny fragments both searing hot and icy cold went shooting in all directions, some digging into Tifa's skin, piercing her. It was more than the woman could take. She squeezed her eyes shut, and...

"Tifa?" a deep voice.

Something tumbled to the floor, a dull thud, a gasp, the movement of fabric on fabric.

"Tifa?" the words of a higher-pitched girl.

The woman looked up fearfully... she didn't want to see that... that horrible... whatever it was again. Hallucination? Daydream? She hadn't been drinking recently, so why...? If there was nothing of that, what could it be? Occasionally the planet would offer its insight to a person, visions, prophecies... but they were always benevolent, always _meant_ something. Tifa hadn't the faintest what to make of this, because as far as she could tell it was only meant to scare her.

She knew that Jenova played tricks on people, she shuddered to think of the things Cloud used to see, that sent him into fits of tears and convulsions. What could turn a man as strong as him into such a horror-stricken, shivering child, she didn't want to know, but it couldn't have been too far-off from this. And even yet, Jenova was long gone... she'd had the good fortune never to be exposed to the alien, to never have to suffer her torments.

All these thoughts twisted painfully in and out of her head during the split-seconds before her eyelids cracked open... Luckily, this time she was met with the perfectly unremarkable faces of her old companions, and no dark-masked demon to be found. Both were perfectly themselves, both perfectly allright: a slightly flushed looking Vincent and Yuffie peering back at her from inside the room.

Besides her sudden, unannounced entry, she couldn't help but wonder what they were staring at... there was no accusation or blame in their eyes from barging in... and so the shaken woman mentally checked herself for what could be wrong. Finally managing to gather back some semblance of coherent thought, and push the disturbing images of earlier aside. Tifa at last realized that the laundry basket had tumbled to the floor, and clothes were piled at her feet.

Her mouth hung open a moment, eyes wide... and Yuffie cleared her throat, about to ask why her friend appeared so startled, but the older woman stooped and already began picking up the things she'd dropped, hurriedly piling them back in the hamper. Despite the current normality of the situation, she wanted to be out of there as fast as she could.

"Do you need help with that?" Vincent meekly offered.

"No!" answered Tifa much too quickly, "No, I'm fine!" and with the last thing dropped into the case, she stood, hooking it under her arm, and dashing away. All Vincent and Yuffie saw of her for the rest of the night were the trailing strands of her long dark brown hair vanishing around the edge of the doorway.

xxx

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** I hope that scene at the end confused you without turning you all away from the story. To be honest, I hadn't even thought to put it in before I actually sat down, started to write it, and then realized it was there. Right here and now I'm gonna say that the whole thing is a blatant ripoff of the artwork of 'Rone', in her online manga. I'll link it, because it's just too awesome not to follow: 'http: -/ - /- shadesofgrey. rydia. net' Just take out the spaces and hyphens and whatnot. I've based work off of hers before, my fanfiction 'When Demons Rise and Angels Fall' has a long disclaimer crediting the entire plotline to her stories (borrowed with her permission, of course). I do hope you check it out.


	5. Blind Eyed

**Author's Beginning Note Thingy: **Any flames from here henceforth... will be oggled and laughed at. I'm a pyro. XD

xxx

Tifa cried herself to sleep that night... whether from the stress of what she'd just seen, or the stab of pain she'd felt deep in her core upon seeing it, she didn't know. Her mental state was a wrecked ship on jagged shores, and in her unrestful dreams that night, she was the sole survivor fighting against the tide while a demon of black clouds and red sunset-eyes mocked her from a distance.

The only difference between that awful night and the next awful morning was that now she had nothing to hold on to. She was utterly alone, despite the friendly company, they didn't count. Alone, exposed, and bare, feeling as if the concerned looks that Vincent and Yuffie periodically cast her way cut apart her shallow, fake smiles like they were just that. Perhaps Tifa had overestimated the security of her defenses.

The walls of her home were running away from her again, spreading out. She was alone, and her last refuge had gone barren and desolate. Tifa walked around that day, doing the menial chores of the house, making breakfast, mopping up the bar floor, as if on autopilot. She went through the familiar and tedious actions with mechanical disinterest, all of her usual fervor dead.

Of course, it was the shock which made her mask so thin. Some time alone, a strong shot of whiskey, and a long, medicine-induced sleep later (which she only realized upon waking and immediately throwing up was probably a bad idea to take with alcohol) she was refreshed and ready to face the public once more.

But serving dinner to the unabashed couple that night proved harder than she thought. Tifa imagined herself lucky that Vincent and Yuffie were so taken with eachother that they did not notice the slight discrepancies in her demeanor: the smile on her face was too wide, and her teeth grit together a little too tightly. The swing in her step was not out of cheerfulness, it was meant to rake in attention. In her line of work as a bartendress, she'd perfected it for those just-in-case situations when tips were running low, but Vincent would have nothing of it... he didn't even seem to notice, so she again gave up.

And last of all, the twinkle of mischief they caught in her eye when she walked in on the two tenderly embracing, entwined in a chaste kiss, was nothing more righteous than a gleam of jealousy.

But time heals all wounds, and all sharp edges are eventually made dull. Tifa came to terms with her situation after a few weeks and a few anti-depressants. Her insomnia melted away, as did her loneliness. There were still pangs of envy that she felt tearing at her heart when she saw Yuffie and Vincent openly displaying their affection, but for the most part she took pleasure, again, in their company.

The murders of women had stopped, though the killer hadn't been caught yet... nevertheless, it allowed more time for Yuffie to slack off on her case and stay at home.

Every once in a while she would see something peculiar again... a rustle around Vincent, a dark light (if there was such a thing) like an aura that surrounded him, took on a strange shape, or something. She always just shut her eyes, counted to five, and when she looked up it was gone. Sometimes Yuffie wasn't there. The girl would be walking by, and all color would leak out of her, and then she would grow fainter and fainter and disappear, and all of a sudden be back. It would have bothered her, if she would have stood to be bothered.

Right now, she was determined to be happy for herself and for her friends, and her drugs were determined with her. She attributed these strange visions to the mix of happy-pills and snoozy-pills (as Yuffie annoyingly nicknamed them), and the fact that the two probably had some strange reaction with one another. But if it meant good night's rest and a good day's mirth, she could take on anything.

In the eyes of Tifa Lockheart, this was the first time in a long time that things were finally looking up.

In the eyes of Vincent Valentine, it was quite the opposite.

_Yuffie is strong._ he told himself as he went to sleep the night after he first kissed her, _She can survive. She will survive._

So from then on forward, he'd turned a blind eye to all contrary evidence. He let himself do things he'd never before thought he was capable of doing... smiling, laughing, holding hands. For a while, he thought things would be fine, if anything Yuffie was flourishing from the blank, empty slate she'd been when he found her. Could it be possible that he was actually _healing_ a broken heart rather than just peeling the rest of it away?

He felt like he was being bashed in the head with the obvious now, all at once. His eyes were pulled too wide and taped open, forcing him to see that which he would have rather denied up until now. Yuffie may be acting happier, healthier... but her body and her strength was failing.

He could see this now, he supposed, because Chaos was making it very clear what he was craving... yes, Chaos was back awake now, drowsy, but awake, and that could only mean one thing...

"Yuffie?" he said, stepping softly in to the darkened bedroom where she was resting.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, hi Vince." she said, yawning, stretching, and sitting back up. "You need something?" the tone-shift in her voice, and deliberate crossing of her legs over the side of the bed meant that something had been implied by that... she offered him a cute smile.

"Are you allright?" he asked, looking around into the relative darkness.

"Yeah, fine." she assured him passively, "Just been really tired lately. No worries." another heavy smile.

They met face-to-face, Vincent turning to observe her with his newly cleared vision. Both noticed something peculiar about the other.

"Vince... what's with your eyes?"

Yuffie was very, very skinny. Tifa fed them well, but for some reason she wasn't putting on any weight... or even keeping on any, for that matter. And she'd done nothing in particular to take it off. Her once slightly plump and lively face was now gaunt and weary. Her grey eyes had lost both their childlike shimmer from long ago, and their cutting edge from more recently... instead they were just a dull muted shade, like pewter left unpolished. Dark circles had formed visibly in the pale skin under those eyes.

He was walking towards her. _She won't understand_ he heard his own voice say, _Don't tell her, she'll just run away. I'll lose her and she won't understand._ a warning, a threat, a horror story all in one being told to him in his own words, in his own mind: losing Yuffie, hurting her... but he had to do it. He _had_ to. But she wouldn't understand...

"Vince?"

He took his seat at her side. The madness, that second part of himself, _himself_ that had formed when the inhibitions against violence just _needed_ to be taken aside, was bubbling up. It knew he didn't want to do this, it knew how much he had to. It was ready to take over if he faltered, but he didn't. Yuffie... Yuffie was special, important, different from all those other girls. Deserved a better treatment.

_Deserves,_ he thought, _if nothing else, than to be killed by the one she loves._

_I am the one she loves._ his mind said, _I know._ he thought back. _I know she loves me._

_I won't be able to do this, I'll help you._ he argued, _I can, and I will. Yuffie deserves..._

_...deserves a clean death. I deserve to remember, as punishment, as..._

"Vincent?" her voice broke through his cloud of thoughts again, and her bony hand came to settle on his flushed cheek. He looked up, meeting her gaze questioningly, but silently, "Your eyes..."

There was great turmoil there... amidst the bloody scarlet was a fiery orange-red that swirled and twisted like snakes around his iris, and cast a flickering light over both their faces.

"Yuffie..." he breathed, his voice a low animalian growl as he leaned forward, oh-so-gently moving his arms into a tender hug around her shoulders.

She smiled and hummed appreciatively, leaning into the embrace without suspicions.

"...I love you." he said, and in a swift motion, moved his metal hand over her neck, and snapped it after no more than a twitch of the finger.

Eyes wide, Yuffie slumped breathless into his waiting arms, while Vincent closed his eyes tight. He never remembered doing it... but the action was so well-practiced, so familiar to his muscles that it all but enacted itself, as the brass claw raised up, then plunged down into her chest.

He felt the squirt of warm lifeblood on his face, and shut his eyes tighter, pressing together his lips and gritting his teeth while the pointed fingers groped around within her for something in particular. They found it, and with a disgusting slurp he wrenched the hand from her breast, holding aloft the desired object.

Burning with an orangeish-pink light in the sinking darkness was a spherical jewel, smooth, pure, and perfect, despite the small spots of blood that decorated the surface. He surveyed it with such calmness that it alarmed him. Like a critic reviewing a piece of artwork, was Vincent scrutinizing the crystallized form of Yuffie's heart. He turned it over, spun it around, tested the feel in his human hand, and at last returned it to the mechanical one.

Just like Yuffie's strength, the light slowly faded away, absorbing into him. He took a deep breath of it, the sweet smell of affection, the refined power of materia, as it sunk into his body, strengthened him. Chaos evanesced to that only miniscule, distant worry he became whenever Vincent was similarly refreshed. His chest rose up, back straightened, and he felt his shaking nerves calm down as he exhaled... but the surprises weren't over yet.

There was a strangled scream from the doorway. A hoarse, quavering yell that rocketed back and forth between high and low painfully, tearing at the vocal cords of the woman shrieking it. A cry of sadness, a wail of utter disbelief, denial, fear...

Vincent abruptly looked up, stood. Yuffie's lifeless corpse fell to the floor at his feet, blood flowed down his metal claw like a river. Little red droplets fell from each finger-point like water from a melting icicle, heated liquid running from the cold to spatter on the ground. He turned and faced the _still open_ doorway. Why hadn't he closed it? _What good would it have done anyway?_ he asked himself, _She would've come in at morning, found Yuffie dead and me gone. I just spared her the suspense this way._

"Nnooo!!" Tifa screamed again, her legs giving out as she flopped back against the far wall and slid to the ground, "No, not you!"

xxx

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** One hell of a cliffhanger! This was a fun chapter to write. The next one also will be. I hope the next will be the last... there's not very far to go. Our last two characters here are as good as insane now, so there's not much left to do. Although I haven't even posted the first chapter of the story (because I'm without a name for it, still) yet, and will have definitely already written the conclusion before I post this, I promise I'll update soon!


	6. Crystal Cage

"It can't be you, it can't be you!!" she hollered, doubling over on her knees in that spot, her hands over her head, fingers threading through the thick dark hair. "Not Yuffie, Oh Ifrit, not Yuffie..." she moaned.

Vincent just stood silent, watching her blankly. Such a reaction was expected, certainly, but what was he supposed to do about it? Try to explain himself? Impossible, she would never understand. He would just have to leave... before he did the same to her. He was still trying to get his mind around the concept that Yuffie, the youngest, liveliest member of their old party was still and dead at his feet at his fault. He was unused to the lucidity when he killed, and would always just accept the recent death as an indisputable fact that came sure as the sunrise he woke to. But something about Yuffie's spirit seemed to want to cling to life, at least in his mind. He figured it was in her nature... to be contradictory and stubborn.

In fact, there was a good chance that Tifa would kill him before he could get out the door. If he could help it, he wouldn't fight. He wanted to die, in a way... anything was better than this. Yet he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that it wouldn't happen that way. Chaos would not let it. He was doomed to live, and that was his curse. The women he killed along the way were just tally marks under his list of sins and nothing more.

"Why did it have to be you, Vincent?" the woman looked up again, her well-formed, olive-colored face now red and puffy, stray hairs sticking to tearstained cheeks. "Why is it you?"

"Tifa..." he said, voice a deep, slithering monster, corrupting with unreal softness as it came from his mouth. It made her shiver and lurch forward again, hands over her eyes. She didn't want to see it... she didn't want to see that black oily beast he'd become.

The vision was back. Probably due to trauma, probably, she thought. She saw, where Vincent stood, a slim and tall demonic figure, charcoal-colored, burned by the fire of Yuffie's love. She could see it, in thin orangey lines, still coursing through his veins. The red eyes stared unblinkingly out, locked on her, and the wings filled the room with their overwhelming darkness. In it, she could see reflected her own light, all alone and flickering. She was, her color was, white, with a soft yellowish tinge, and the demon licked its lips when he saw it.

She shuddered and lay her head against the wall. Her ribs ached from the sharp sobs she took, a knife cutting into her gut with every breath. Her neck was sore, her face stung all over from the salt, and her hands were shaking so violently, she wouldn't have been able to even hold a drinking glass to calm it, let alone get up right now, go over to the bar, and prepare for herself the alcohol. She just pressed herself up against the wall and wept.

Vincent came closer. He felt the urge already boiling deep in his belly, and it made him nauseous. He really did have to get out of here. His mind was reeling. He could feel chunks of it breaking off and floating away. He was losing himself in his insatiable, inhuman desire, and there was nothing he could do. He'd told himself before it was only necessary, but the necessity had become not just that, but a lust as well. Yuffie's love was strong and true, but fleeting... he could tell by its taste, by the quality of its burn within him, searing him white-hot from the inside. He'd had this kind before, it wouldn't last long. He _had_ to get out of here.

But not without redeeming himself in the eyes of Tifa first. But wait, hadn't he only just said that was impossible? Why would he want to anyway? Looking down at the distraught woman, he knew only one thing: the single, solid, unchangeable fact in his spinning and shifting world was that Tifa was his friend... and he at least owed her an explanation.

"Tifa..." he said again, even deeper, but this time more genuine and demanding. He _needed_ her attention.

With a flinch, as if struck, she looked up and managed to stifle a whimper as he came nearer.

The gunman squatted beside her, and lay a consoling hand on her shoulder, which she surprisingly let stay. The blood on his claw was staining her shirt, but she didn't care... something told her it wouldn't matter for long anyway.

A flash again, though of blinding white and that same orange. Just outlines and warmth, and she could still somehow tell: he was not trying to hurt her. He would not try. He only wanted the best.

When things returned, she took a real close look at Vincent's face. She saw true remorse there, hidden behind the scattered and broken red irises of his eyes. They were fractured into too many small pieces to be easily put together again, and the wall no longer protected the surface. In the gold-orange lines that were tearing their way through that soft muscle, she could easily glimpse the inner workings of his soul.

Briefly, Tifa wondered if she was insane, or if it was just Vincent. She thought for sure it was her... between semi-prophetic hallucinations and all the stress she'd been under lately, she must have finally cracked. But then... perhaps it was both of them. Vincent, though he seemed it outwardly, had never been the most stable person among the party. Sure, she commended him on his strong will and fortitude any day, but a human could only survive as themselves for so long with four other personalities overshadowing their own in their head all the time. A life of being tormented by demons couldn't be healthy for one's mental state.

So perhaps it _was_ just Vincent. As much as she didn't want to believe it, as she wanted to resign the visions to PTSD, or alcoholism, or insomnia, or stress or something, she could not. Something deep down in her heart was telling her that what she was seeing was the truth. The pure, and bitter truth.

And she didn't want it. Was Vincent really a demon? As in, Vincent, not the things within him. Before the two had been separate and distinct, but now they had merged into one... what could it be? What could have happened? Had it been... had his final sentence come with the slaying of his old friend? She looked over to the girl, but nothing of her remained but a blackened skeleton, and she had to look away.

Meeting Vincent's eyes, she _knew_. Yuffie's death had been the key turning in the lock. Now he was caged, chained into his fate. His destiny was laid out before him, and he was dragging the weight of guilt, sorrow, and insanity all along the road with him.

"Tifa, please allow me to..." he started, though he choked, his voice catching strangely when Tifa looked at him. Her eyes were perfectly placid and calm. Her crying had stopped, breathing had evened. There was a long silence before she spoke, her voice unwavering:

"Go on, Vincent." she said, "Perhaps we should... get somewhere less..." she cast a stray look over his shoulder to Yuffie.

He winced, and nodded, standing up. He didn't bother to offer her a hand up, because she'd already stood and started swaying off toward the livingroom. Vincent remained in his place, stricken silent and still for a moment as he watched her. He thought she was beautiful then, turned away from him, her long hair wafting along as she went, the blood running down her right shoulder and bare arm. Yuffie's blood that he had put there, his mark on her.

It wasn't long before they were both seated on the couch. Tifa's posture was straight and erect, her hands folded in her lap and she stared out across the room, like a militaryman at attention. Vincent, on the other hand, lounged on the other side of the sofa. He'd cleaned the blood off his claw, and it lay across the backrest, tapping it gently.

"It's Chaos." he said to her, "He needs to be suppressed."

"And tearing hearts out does that?"

He winced at her bitter comment, piercing like an arrow through his heart, if he still had one. He figured he didn't... whatever weight sat in his chest was borrowed, not his own, shriveled, and by now half-dead, choking on foreign blood. "It does... sometimes..." he said warily. How to explain such an alien concept? "It's a fact that the only part of a human that survives their death in a worldly manner is love." he began... "It's how Lucrecia remained, crystallized in her cave, waiting for me. It's why Aeris watches over us all still. That kind of power is... immeasurable when harnessed. You know the protomateria, no, Tifa?" he asked, quirking his head to one side.

She nodded slowly, still not tearing her eyes away from the opposite wall, and he sighed.

"Lucrecia's original manifestation of her affections." he said darkly, touching a human hand to his chest, and stroking it lightly over the fabric of the shirt. "I came back to her after Omega was defeated because Chaos was trying to exploit his new free reign. No longer a subordinate to a greater lifeform, he had only me to break through to get to the world. I... couldn't let that..." his words became blockier, harder to say, and the woman nodded again.

She understood. It was what she always did, the only thing she could do for any of her friends was understand. Cloud, Aeris, Yuffie, now Vincent, even, had all poured their hearts out into Tifa's, and she thought maybe that the four frameworks of secrets preserved within her were what was filling her to the bursting point after all.

"I came back to her, and drained the last of her energy away." Vincent continued, soft. "Then I had to find more, somehow." a hand raised up, lay on his forehead, and tugged at the front of his hair as if trying to rip it out. "So I came here, to Edge. I had hoped... to find someone else, other than Lucrecia. I had hoped to move on." as he came to a broken halt in his sentence, his entire body fell... hand dropped out of his hair, but the fingers got stuck and tangled and so his arm just hung there, suspended in front of his face. His shoulders bent, the middle of his back sagged, and he looked so... old. Of course, by now Vincent was pushing seventy, though he didn't seem it on the outside. Tifa had never known anything like this, even if it only lasted for a moment, the once proud and strong man became something this frail and lost.

"Since then it's been back and forth... girl to girl... I'm not proud of what I did." he looked up, the desperation in his eyes so bright and blinding Tifa had to look away because it hurt. He was so alone... and so wanting not to be. "I... stayed away from Avalanche, from you because..." he at last turned his terrible eyes away down the hall where they'd come from. Tifa too moved her gaze to look at it. Something there was suppressed and silent, a cloud of dingy grey hanging like a curtain over the defiled spot, hiding it from the eyes of the world. She wondered if Vincent could see it too.

"Why did you have to kill them?" she demanded. Vincent looked down.

"Because staying with me saps their power dry... their very life force. Did you not notice how Yuffie had been... weakening as of late?" he looked up with sad eyes.

Tifa's brow creased, "...I did." she consented, folding her arms and looking down at the ground, "...but why is that a reason to kill her?" her fire of interest was not much more than a fading spark now. She was weary... so weary... of loss, and love, and confusion and the whole futility of it. Every time any member of their group seemed to at last find peace, something always came along and upset it all again.

"It was out of mercy, Tifa." he said harshly, "Would you rather she, or any of the others wither away slowly, die in agony mere husks of what they were before? I may be far gone, but a part of me is still human." he spat, pain wracking every syllable of speech "I could not simply sit by and watch that."

"I... I know..." the woman answered, holding her stomach like she would be sick, and bending over forward. "But... the hearts..."

"To sustain me." he finished off. "Every human's heart is an energy source... and just like any energy on this earth, it solidifies into a jewel very similar to my protomateria... Lucrecia's heart. They contain all of what is left for their owners to give, and I had to take them to tide me over. To make sure Chaos would not have been let out before I could find... another adequate... supplier."

Tifa pressed her lips together in disgust, like a fussy child trying to resist eating some unwanted food. "Vincent..." she whimpered sympathetically, reaching a hand out to touch him, but he recoiled away, and her arm dropped back to her side. Oh, she wanted to comfort him, to be there for him, to _end_ it for him, to make sure that everything was allright and that Vincent, poor, beloved Vincent would finally find some long-deserved rest from his cruel fate.

But how could she do that? Yuffie's death had... sealed the broken man she used to know away underneath the terrible darkness she'd seen before. How could she reach him now? How could she prove to him he still had a heart beneath it all? How could she unlock the chains that held it in?

_Lockheart..._ it came in two beats, paired together, and faded away in the silence after. Her answer, straight from the open air, but she didn't question it. Because _it_ was _her_.

She opened her eyes, wide and truth-seeing, but today she saw nothing. Nothing but... plain old Vincent sitting there before her.

Could she salvage his crumbling heart by opening up hers?

Because she saw no heart in that demon in the door. As much as she wanted to deny it, Vincent didn't have one left. He had half, perhaps, a while ago... the other piece broken off by carelessness and Lucrecia, and Yuffie had half once, _her_ missing piece was buried with Reno.

And she saw when, weeks ago, the two had lain in eachother's arms and put their heart-halves together, in love, in one. That whole had gone to the girl, for a time. Harbored and nurtured, and she _saw, _just now, as Vincent recollected it. Saw the way he held it up, Yuffie's very soul, and squeezed it dry like a piece of fruit, sucking up the juice that came out, taking it in. And the others he had squandered were the same, to merely fill his veins, and then they were gone. It seemed a foolish, roundabout way to achieve his needed task, but she didn't know why she could see that now... how this made sense to her.

"What you need, Vincent..." she realized her voice was sounding out, looking up with a sad smile, and laying a hand softly on her chest. "...is not the energy from the source, but the source itself. One that is fresh, and full, not strained by overuse. Harvested live, not from a body that has already begun to wilt. If you reap the living rose from the dead branch, it will not last a day... but if the flower is plucked from a thriving bush, it will keep."

He did not like the smile on her lips. He shuddered at the hopeless but decided look in her half-lidded eyes. He didn't know what it was, but he felt much more comfortable with Tifa turned away, the fire of anger kindled in her heart, rather than with this soft glow of compassion... and pity.

And then she did the unthinkable. Tilting her head back with a sigh, shaking her hair loose, delicious from its ponytail, pink fingernails dug in to the white skin just over her heart...

"No, Tifa, don't!!" he lunged, but it was already far too late.

With a squish, and a gentle trickle of blood down her arm, Tifa's hand sunk into her chest, and closed around something deep inside. She gasped, and through her own fighter's strength, slid her hand back out, revealing its treasured prize...

Clasped between darkened bloody fingertips was a gleaming yellow orb, and its light in the small room was a rival to the sun. A shuddering, gasping, cut-off breath wracked Tifa's trembling frame, and she held out the shining gem to him, while weakly falling back.

"Tifa! Tifaa!!" he bent over her, a hand on either side of her face, holding it up. "No, no, no... you can't! Why? How could you?!"

She merely smiled... and from the cracks at the corners of her mouth spilled a little bit of blood, dark and thick. Her red-stained lips inaudibly choked out the words "I love you", and he became aware of a pressure on his chest...

Looking down, he saw her arm, muscles flexed, determinedly forcing the jewel into him. The pain was unimaginable, like nothing he'd ever felt before, and he screamed... a horrible, twisted yell, his demon clawing hungrily from the inside out, reaching to envelop the object and the light. He felt it like a cold lump of steel lodged into him, like a bullet the size of the woman's hand.

Beneath the gunman, Tifa lay, her strength dwindling and her arm limply falling down. Her eyes shut, and Vincent's breath came quick. He looked down, and the body of the woman beneath him was pale and still, and her flesh was cold.

xxx

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** It's long, it took me three days to write, and damnit, I was having SO much trouble at the end. It's supposed to be dramatic, I didn't want it to fizzle out, but I was having so much trouble with descriptions. Anyway... I hope the end is up to par with the rest of the chapter/story, please review.

P.S. there is an epilogue coming, and a sequel! But the sequel will take time.


	7. Epilogue

**Author's Beginning Note Thingy: **So any of you who stuck through this... thanks a whole lot. I think I lost some people when I killed Tifa... XD I realize this isn't your usual Yuffentine or Tifentine, and these aren't the pairing _I_ usually write either. So if you made it to the morbid end, props to you, and hope you enjoy.

xxx

Dully, Tifa's glazed eyes seemed to twitch... perhaps it was just death-throes, the last of her life leaving her body as it entered Vincent's, but perhaps not... She was definitely watching something.

All this was barely comprehended by a pain-wracked, grief-stricken, guilt-ridden mind. Vincent lay on the floor; he'd fallen off the couch in shock, and was now motionless on the ground, watching her watching him. The lightest of his curiosities wondered what she saw, this last vision upon death...

Beneath the tumultuous, watery-black surface of the demon's flesh, the smooth heart smoldered with a sulfuric yellow pallor. It looked sickly and corrupted... but only because of what lay around it. At once a piercing ray of light, like an arrow, burst out, burning the shadow away...

The demon form around him, mirrored in Tifa's clouding eyes, grew less and less distinct. Little feathers and leaves of dark went wafting off of his body, bit by bit to swirl around. Where once there had been horns and claws, now in no time was a shapeless blob, and not long after that there was no other black than the natural shadows of the room.

With an extended hiss, or perhaps it was the sound of rushing wings, it all disappeared, the beast becoming encapsulated within him, and on the outside was only Vincent. The last of the light died, and contentment settled on Tifa's face before it froze like that, completely still.

Breathing felt strange... like each inhalation was stretching him out, like he'd spent too long packed away in a tiny little box, and needed to be set out in the open air again. Something was thumping wildly in his chest, an equally odd sensation from a part of him that had so long been out of use.

Vincent would never forget, could never forget the feeling... the glowing yellow ball's acidic aura burning into him, moving aside the matter that was in the way, boring a hole deep into his chest, settling itself there, and taking up root. Running new arteries out from its plastic boundary to reconnect with his old, shriveled, neglected ones. For a while he was stricken immobile and silent with pain, his extremities tingling with new feeling, a sharpened edge on the world.

The still that followed as the burning ebbed away was horrific. Vincent was so used to hearing the ambient sounds of other people... light footsteps, a shifting of clothing against itself, breaths, heartbeats. He knew how to hear them over his own, and now... there was nothing but his own sighs, his own pounding chest, and his own mind, completely clear. No more clouded judgment, no more swayed desires or skewed outlooks. No more demons pushing him this way and that, just him and the stillness.

Slowly, achingly, the gunman sat up on the floor, putting a hand over an eye. Raising it up, he saw the reflection of fiery orange on flesh, still. So it seemed that some damage was irreparable...

He glanced over at Tifa's unmoving body, and looked down at the ground with the sensation of needles in his eyes. Yes... irreparable. A part of him was lost... never to be found or replaced. Two parts, in fact, one lay just behind him, the other in the room down the hall. Vincent was swimming in all the blood on his hands. His mind bashed on the top of the inside of his skull, screaming to get out of the quickly-flooding deathtrap it was in, wanting to be free of this cursed body.

The blissfully new heart that beat in his chest had an infant's naivety on the world, and each of its sorrows (and he expected its joys, too) came with the swiftness and severity of a knifestrike. He supposed this was just a punishment for living in a dull-edged illusion for so long. But now that womblike exterior had been stripped away from him, and at the cost of two loved-ones' lives.

Vincent found himself alone, and realized only then what that was _really_ like. Deafened by the silence, there was no-one... not an enemy, not a friend, or a lover, or a demon, just he and the night, with a stillness so great that the very air seemed solid, a breath impossible to take.

With a swish of his cloak rippling the fluid air, it's subtle sound like the crack of a whip to the noiseless peace he'd just smashed, Vincent turned and walked out, like a puppet pulled by its strings. There was grief simmering in his soul, and guilt, and longing, and horrible, horrible sin. So much of it, it made his skin feel hollow, made it seem like the amazing, overwhelming pressure of the outside world he was about to face would just fall in on him and crush him into nothing.

He hadn't fathomed of time ever moving on after that moment when Tifa died... and yet it had, and it was, and he was caught in the current of it, for the first time in forever.

Vincent Valentine stared with broken eyes at the winding road that led out of Edge. A gory, grim past was behind him, and as he took the first step, he felt a crack, and a thunk, and an even larger part of who he was just fell away, and shattered in the dust. And it seemed like he didn't even remember the past few weeks... if only because he didn't want to.

A young little heart was dancing enthusiastically in his chest, and it was calling out for someone... _someone_... Tifa's heart was calling for someone, and Vincent had no choice and no desire to do anything other than what it said.

A slow complacence settled over his troubled face, and the steps came quicker now: one foot after the other. The road led to Cosmo Canyon, perhaps the end of his searching waited there.

xxx

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Not how I originally intended to end this. Do I sense a wee little bit of hope in the last line? Naw... must just be me... XD Reading into things too much. A sequel is on it's way... it'll get here eventually. It'll take a while. I'm gonna say right here and now... the main characters of the sequel are Vincent and Cloud. I don't intend for there to be any romance, but I am a hardcore Vincent/Cloud fangirl, so I really can't promise anything. If that squicks you, oh well, hope you at least liked this fic, it'll probably at least get some attention from the other Strifentiners. Thanks for reading!


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